Setup Guides

Setup Guides

Ready-made setups for the most common kinds of worlds and servers. Each guide gives the exact commands to run in order, the matching config values if you prefer editing the file, what players will notice, and how to tune it afterward.

I want...	Guide
A relaxed world for friends who want zombies without stress	Casual Co-op
The hardest survival the mod can offer	Hardcore Apocalypse
Safe days and dangerous nights, like vanilla but worse	Night-Only Zombies
Quiet days and nights, with a big scheduled zombie night every few days	Event Nights
Zombies that break, build, and climb into player bases	Siege and Base Defense
A world that stays calm for weeks and gets harder for months	Slow-Burn Long-Term World
Many players online without lag	Big Server Performance
This mod together with other zombie, AI, or difficulty mods	Modpacks and Other Zombie Mods

Not sure? Start with nothing at all: a fresh install already runs the Standard preset, described on Home.

Before You Start

• Commands need operator permission (level 2). Run them in game or from the server console. They save to config/zombieapocalypseaddon-common.toml right away and apply to every world.
• Run the preset first, then the rest. A preset replaces the settings in the list below, so anything you set before it is lost. Every guide that uses a preset puts it first.
• on keeps your settings. /za breaking on and the other on commands only turn a feature on (plus anything it depends on) and wait for its start day. dayone instead of on starts it today.
• Back up the world before turning on block breaking, block placing, or towering.
• Never use vanilla /time set on a running world. It resets the day counter that hordes and difficulty use. Use /time add <ticks>, and /za day set <day> to put the day back.

What A Preset Replaces

/za preset casual, standard, and hardcore set these and nothing else:

• custom waves, daytime waves, variants, night boost, hordes, blood moons, and difficulty scaling all switched on
• wave interval, chance, size, and nearby cap
• the night cap (nightmax) and blood moon cap (bloodmoonmax), which go back to 0, the same cap as by day
• spawn range 30, minimum distance 12, attempts 10, and the open-sky rule on
• daylight start day, block-light limit, and baby zombie chance
• hordes at dusk, and their interval, chance, duration, multiplier, wave size, and event check interval
• blood moon chance, multiplier, and wave size
• the blood moon start day: day 7 for Casual, day 0 for Standard and Hardcore
• scaling start day, full-strength day, and the speed, health, armor, and weapon bonuses
• night spawn multiplier

Everything else stays as you set it, including scaling steps and extra zombies, variant chances, gear tiers, block breaking, block placing, towering, animal hunting, compatibility, and advanced attributes.

Commands Or Config File

Every guide lists both. The commands are easier and safe while the server runs. The config values are for editing the file with the server stopped; find each setting under the section named in the comment and change its value. Do not paste a second copy of a section header such as [horde] into the file.

To start from a clean slate, run /za config reset all first. It puts every setting back to its default.

Check And Test Your Setup

Command	What it tells you
/za	The current day, waves, events, scaling, and siege features.
/za spawn	Wave timing, chance, size, caps, distance, and light rules.
/za events or /za bloodmoon	Horde and blood moon schedule and whether one is running.
/za scaling	Today's difficulty strength.
/za gear	Gear tiers and today's tier odds.
/za breaking, /za placing, /za towering	Each siege feature and the day it starts.

To see an event without waiting:

/za events start
/za events stop
/za bloodmoon start
/za gear preview 4

/za bloodmoon start begins now if it is night, otherwise at the next nightfall. Blood moons end at dawn. There is no stop, but /za bloodmoon off clears an active or queued one; run /za bloodmoon on afterward to allow random ones again.

To try a later day, set the clock first and the day second, because /time set resets the day:

/time set 11900
/za day set 20

This puts you just before dusk on day 20. A scheduled horde rolls at dusk on days that divide evenly by the horde interval (day 20 with interval 5 or 10), once the daylightstart grace period has passed. Jumping the clock across dusk with /time add skips that day's roll; use /za events start instead.

Creative and Spectator players do not attract custom waves. Test in Survival.